With more and more attention has been paid to low carbon life in modern daily life, lithium ion batteries are becoming increasingly popular. Flexible lithium ion batteries have been widely used in energy store stations and electric vehicles due to low mass, high energy density and low cost. Generally, a flexible lithium ion battery pack includes a number of flexible battery cells connected in series or in parallel.
Flexible lithium ion battery generally has small thickness. Tabs of the flexible lithium ion battery generally are made from metal foil having desirable conductivity, such as copper foil, aluminum foil or nickel foil. At present, tabs of the flexible lithium ion batteries are generally connected to each other via laser soldering, ultrasonic welding or tin soldering. Soldering connection has high stability, high reliability and high degree of automation.
However, the connection of tabs of battery cells in prior art at least has the following disadvantages:
1) The tin solder may lead to high temperature on the surfaces of the tabs, which may lead to high temperature in the lithium ion battery cells due to heat transfer and further adversely affect the cycling performance and stability of the battery cells;
2) Laser welding and ultrasonic welding are both irreversible welding. Once be soldered, the components cannot be detached. In the use of the battery pack, if one or more lithium ion battery cells fail to function properly, the one or more malfunctioned lithium ion battery cells cannot be replaced, which will adversely affect the use of other lithium ion battery cells until the battery pack cannot be used anymore and lead to waste of resource.3) Flexible lithium ion battery generally has small thickness, and the distance between different tabs is also very small. There is no adequate space for carrying out laser welding or ultrasonic welding, which will affect the soldering operation as well as lead to damage to the tabs during soldering operation.
In view of the foregoing, what is needed, therefore, is to provide a device for connecting tabs of battery cells which can be assembled and disassembled readily.